MURFREESBORO — Dozens of McFadden School of Excellence students showed up in 19th century clothing Thursday morning with hopes the classroom they were going to would match.

Across a second-floor catwalk above the school library, students got to see the historic classroom for the first time.

"When you walk into the classroom, they're immersed in the 1880s," said Christy Moore, one of the McFadden teachers who helped restore the classroom that had been turned into attic space in recent years.

Teachers Moore and Andy Roach had discovered last summer that the attic space on the second floor of the school still had old flooring, walls and chalkboards.

Fifth-grader Mady Perkins said she begged Roach to let her see the room during a summer extracurricular activity and never expected the room to turn out they way it did.

Since the summer, Moore and Roach cleaned the room and brought in two decades-old maps found in the school's crawl space. The chalkboards were filled with lessons, a popcorn-lined Christmas tree was in the front corner, and candles were lit under one florescent light fixture.

"I thought back then that this couldn't be anything," she said. "Now that I see it, it's amazing."

When they got into the room, students quickly put their pail or basket lunches down and sat on benches brought in for the day's worth of classes taught in the one-room-schoolhouse style room.

By the end of the school day, students in classes of Moore and Roach were set to have lessons in penmanship and arithmetic and compete in an old-fashioned spelling bee.

"I'm just really excited," said Donovan Drew, a fourth-grader. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

School Principal Clark Blair spent the early parts of the lesson in the classroom and said the one-room-schoolhouse concept was a great start for how the space could be used.

Moore hopes to turn the room into a "McFadden museum" to display artifacts and history of the school first built in 1938.

"It's just a great experience for our kids," Blair said. "It's not something in the textbooks, obviously."

Moore is also recruiting former students of McFadden from its opening to the 1970s as part of a history project for her students during the spring semester.

While she hoped her students would learn from the history projects, she said she also wanted her children to have a "lifetime memory" from their time in the schoolhouse.

Mady Perkins, the fourth-grader, said the day in the attic was one few others could have.

"I don't know how many students can say they got to up into an attic and play 1880s," she said.

Reach Brian Wilson at 615-278-5165. Follow him on Twitter @brianwilson17.